Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Booking Favoritism

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Posted by Brent Mahaney (Member # 1090) on 08-24-2003, 06:38 PM:

Are there any managers in competitive markets who find that certain studios favor one chain over another?

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-24-2003, 07:04 PM:

yes I have seen this before. At one time there was a twin that was right down the street from an 8 screen then a 10 screen. Tht theater did not run films by buena vista or warner bros.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 08-25-2003, 11:30 AM:

That may be more a matter of the relationship between the individual studio and the theatre's owner. Both of those companies are notorious for tough business practices, Either one will put an owner on a very short financial leash for very little reason, and then pretty much leave him there... high advances, cashiers check, short pay, etc.

Disney is most likely to make a sale if they can make a buck... but they are tough negotiators when it comes to percentages.

Warners is a curious outfit. They'll be the company that seems to defy logic, when it comes to whether a booking might be good for both parties. They have a strange policy in the West, at least in some markets, of holding a title for something like 6 weeks after it leaves the first & sub-run houses, before making it available to discounters.

If an owner was to find studios that can be toughest to deal with, those two would be right up there. It just might be that the owner would rather not deal with it... or maybe he's been taken off service by those studios.

Favoritism isn't a word I'd use since, aside from the possible legalities involved, these things can usually be worked out with the right approach & contacts.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 08-25-2003, 01:30 PM:

One needs to look at the "potential gross" of the involved theatres. Obviously if one theatre has a higher potential gross they will be more likely to play that house. To do this, compare similar-grossing pictures that play to the same demographic. Also, if it's large chain vs. smaller chain ... the larger chain will tend to get better product because they have more to bargain with.

Posted by Kevin Wale (Member # 1851) on 08-25-2003, 02:53 PM:

I have no experience in a market where there is competition and I'm not the booker at our theatre, but I have noticed in our case especially that the size of our town has quite a bit to do with it sometimes.

Marci X has 10 prints available in Oklahoma. Well, we are not one of them being only a 10,000 population town. Being an 8 plex doesn't seem to help in such situations.

Maybe the following is because we don't really have any competition but it always seems to me that we are having to figure out ways to get rid of a film more than we are having to beg for a print. Jeff at Paramount cracks me up... he is forever calling asking to hold a print one more week. LOL. He is definately one that seems to just bend over backwards for us. He's always friendly and always seems to do the best he can to be fair.

Which brings me to what maybe is a different while similar reason for the situations sparking this topic. Maybe some markets are having less a problem with the studio and a problem with thier particular area. Since Disney is closing in Dallas, I truly believe that is why we can't get Open Range even though Kevin Costner lived in this town for a period of time and there are more Costner's in this town than you could ever count. I mean, when the booking agent is out of a job in a week, how hard is he going to try and get a theater a print compared to last year? And I don't say that as to attack his character, he likely has a lot on his mind. I doubt very seriously that it is malicious or careless, but more likely just a case of preoccupation. Who doesn't suffer from that from time to time?

The times I do end up speaking to the film companies, most of them always seem to want thier product out there. Is it lack of competition, area agents, or the repore the owners have built up with these companies?

Perhaps the answer is all of the above.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-25-2003, 06:40 PM:

quote:
That may be more a matter of the relationship between the individual studio and the theatre's owner. Both of those companies are notorious for tough business practices, Either one will put an owner on a very short financial leash for very little reason, and then pretty much leave him there... high advances, cashiers check, short pay, etc.

In the case of the twin at the time, It is now defunct, it was owned by loews. I tend to believe it was as Mike stated. The othere theaters, the 8 screen was first then the 10 came later, are Cinemarks. All other features at the time that were played there alternated with the other Cinemark on the other side of town. Loews had another theater over there that would share movies with that location so if Cinemark played at that location the film played at the twin unless it was booked up then it played at the other cinemarks.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-25-2003, 06:44 PM:

I used to fill in at an AMC (ex-GCC) theatre which was in the same zone as a very successful (but dumpy) National Amusements theatre. Invariably, they would get all product from Universal, Paramount (not surprisingly), MGM, UA, and New Line. We didn't even show trailers for films from those distributors. On the other hand, we got most of the 20th Century Fox/Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. product.

I never understood exactly why this situation worked as it did, but both theatres seemed happy enough with the arrangrment.

Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 08-26-2003, 11:17 AM:

In Dallas anyways, it seemed that if there was a GCC in any particular zone they almost always got the Universal pictures.

This was pretty much a rule, but there were a few exceptions.

Posted by Andrew McCrea (Member # 674) on 08-26-2003, 12:08 PM:

Well, I hear about this all the time from Americans, and I see only Americans have posted, so how does the Canadian market work?

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 08-26-2003, 08:54 PM:

quote:
.. we can't get Open Range...

Open range opened sort of "medium-wide", so a lot of theatres missed on it. There was alo some question as to how it would open, so some conservative bookers might have taken a pass.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 08-26-2003, 09:24 PM:

Kevin:

Hang tight ... as prints come off-screen ... you will be able to open one. I was trying to open it here this week (and I'm in Atlanta metro) ... but there are no prints available. When hey come off I will open it ... just tell your customers to be patient ... that's the way the industry works.

Posted by Kevin Wale (Member # 1851) on 08-26-2003, 10:05 PM:

Oh man... they can get hostile sometimes. LOL

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-26-2003, 10:10 PM:

I'm sure there are cases of "favoritism" in some markets. However, I think the really big problem is distributors and their branch office personnel are not familiar with the actual theaters in which they are booking prints. And their data is notoriously out of date.

I've seen this big time in Lawton, OK. Through the 1990s a number of theaters have opened and closed. For a long time Carmike only had the Showcase Twin and Video Triple, both built between the late 1960's and early 1970's. Litchfield opened the Cache 8 theater in the early 1980s. In 1994, Carmike opened their Carmike 8 site on the west side of town. The Showcase Twin closed down (bldg converted to a Blockbuster Video) and the Video Triple went 2nd run. Yet it took over 6 months and some loud complaints on my part and that of management to get any DTS prints booked at the Carmike 8. Folks were still booking as if they were doing it for the Video Triple (that theater closed down years ago and the building now houses a hardware supply store).

In 1996, the Carmike 8 nearly lost out on "Independence Day". Fox was all set to book that one at the Cache 8 theater in spite of how the allocation agreement flip-flop was supposed to go. I personally got hold of some people at Fox's office in Dallas. Apparently they did not realize Carmike had a new 8-plex in Lawton with 2 THX certified screens equipped with DTS. After that, I wondered if I hadn't made some noise about that one if Carmike would have missed out on all those "Star Wars" releases.

I think a big part of the problem is distributors just look at seating numbers per auditorium and use that to make bookings. The Cache 8 theater I despised for years had by far the largest seating capacities in the area. A couple of their screens had over 400 seats. It didn't matter that the sound and picture was atrocious. I guess when the distributors actually checked attendance numbers at that theater and compared them to the competition they changed things up. Now that old 8 plex is going 2nd run.

I think the distributors and booking offices need something akin to CinemaTour to make choices and keep the data up to date.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 08-26-2003, 11:17 PM:

I wouldn't call it favouritism, they just like some theatres better than others. [Smile]

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 09-03-2003, 02:11 AM:

I wouldn't call it favoritism, but in some markets Paramount, for example, has a customer in that market and typically sells all of their film to that customer. Usually this has some historical basis. However, it isn't an un-bendable rule. For instance we operate an 5 screen arthouse and our competitor operates a 14 screen plex and a 6 screen move over house. In January, after a great deal of effort, our booker convinced Paramount to sell The Hours to us rather than placing it at the 14 plex, where all of Paramount's mainstream product typically goes (We typically get everything from Paramount Classics, but that's a different and pretty autonomous division). Ultimately Paramount agreed and later admitted to our booker that it was the right decision. The caveat was that since we took The Hours we also had to be prepared to take Paramount's next picture (whose title escapes me at the moment) if our competitor refused to play it as a means of protesting selling The Hours to us. For us it was an acceptable risk and we didn't end up having to take the second picture plus we had a very nice run on The Hours. The important thing about the deal was that we were willing to take that second film. Now, the next time Paramount has a quality film like The Hours we might not have to fight so hard and so long to get it. Tenaciousness does have its rewards. [Smile]

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 09-23-2003, 05:45 PM:

Ky got it right and then some.

Greenwich Village must be the most competitive booking zone in the country. Most studios will allocate pictures the way Mike Spaeth explained.

The Disney allocations for this summer are a good example. The UA Union Square landed Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean; the Village East opened The Lizzie McGuire Movie and Freaky Friday; the Loews Village VII got Open Range.

Paramount, however, seems to give all its A-list product to Loews in this particular zone. UA/Regal must have screamed long and loud to Paramount about this practice, otherwise UA might not have opened Jackass last fall or The Hours as "Oscar Bait".

Last week Loews had to drop Dickie Roberts in order to open The Fighting Temptations -- and both pictures are from Paramount. If that studio had an allocation system in place, Loews would not have had to drop a top-5 film just to get a new release.

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 09-26-2003, 01:17 AM:

Charles,

Your Paramount example of dropping Dickie for Temptations is a perfect example of how far a distributor will go to protect a film it has high expectations for. Temptations is a much higher profile film for Par. We had the same situation recently with Searchlight where we wanted to drop Le Divorce so we could open 13 (both Searchlight films). They were willing to delay 13 in order to keep Divorce on our screen. We ended up with both films that week.